Need help: Teaching kids (and Wife) about money management...

[Keebler]

I'm looking for advice on where to find a simplistic money management system that I can use to teach my wife and kids how to manage money.

My wife in particular grew up without learning ANY kind of self discipline or money management skills. It's a long story, but I've tried for years to get her to learn how to manage money and she just can't find it in herself to use any of the things she has learned.

She spends everything she gets as soon as she gets it and can't easily see the difference between want and need. Basically, she spends until she can't spend any more and never gets to the part where she thinks about what she might need tomorrow and she's constantly in debt, overdrawn and in financial turmoil.

The time is right to try again to teach her a system so simple a kid could use it. The benefit is that my grade school aged kids will learn right along with her and maybe everyone will be better off for it.

Despite the fact that I have lots of good habits and knowledge myself and I do a reasonably good job of managing our money, I need to find a book or a game or a system that doesn't make ME the one forcing my opinion on my wife. If someone else tells her she needs to change, it won't come with the same baggage as when I try to tell her what she needs to do. Right now our finances are divided because giving her access to any of "our" money was driving us right back in to bankruptcy.

If you have any book or class or system or game that's simple, fun and effective for teaching some basic money management skills I'd love to hear about it!

[Trixie007]

Dave Ramsey has a product specifically designed to teach kids how to manage money. I personally love the envelope system and both my kids have been on a variation of it since they were around 10 or 11. DS is 15 and still on the envelope system, although I hold his binder until he's ready to go shopping - with the exception of his allowance, which he can have at any time as long as he's not asking for an advance.

[Flamingo]

Remember as a kid you were given an allowance and that was it for the week and you had to budget that money for things that you wanted? Utilizing an envelope system giving access to cash for certain reasons and to stick within that amount would probably be the best for your family as it would limit the amount of money available for a particular purchase (i.e., groceries, gasoline, haircuts, etc., etc.) and is an excellent method of teaching how to budget. The problem a lot of people have is that they never learned to budget - they are given a paycheck and cannoto figure out why they don't have enough to pay the electricity next week or run short on money for gas, food, etc. You don't need a complicated system...just putting cash in envelopes works and put a list on the front of the envelope what it is for and how long the money needs to last before it is replenished.